


bring me tchotchkes when i'm gone

by FaintingInCoils



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 12:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6956413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaintingInCoils/pseuds/FaintingInCoils
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magnus can't sleep.  He's too busy worrying about what will happen to  his friends once he can't be around to protect them.  (He hopes it involves a lot of petty theft and flowers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	bring me tchotchkes when i'm gone

He knows he can't protect them forever.

He thinks about it sometimes, on nights when he can't sleep. Merle snores like a battle-wagon rushing from its starting crate. Taako talks in his sleep sometimes, which can't possibly be a surprise to anyone. It wasn't to Magnus. He listens to them, shuffling in their sleep, and his first thought is always, “My friends are good men. I have to protect them.” 

And then it's always that. “I can't protect them forever.”

He would if he could, but it's impossible. He's a human, and the lifespan he can expect simply won't allow him the opportunity. If by some miracle he makes it all the way to eighty, it will still be little more than the passing of a season to Taako. Even Merle's death will, at most, coincide with whatever sort of mid-life crisis the world has in store for Taako, and what a horrifying thought that is. A grief-stricken elven wizard with no more friends to be his voice of judgment.

Magnus hopes that Taako steals trinkets for his grave. Ridiculous ones. Tiny souvenirs from big cities who think those sorts of things are worth creating.

He hopes Killian gets a golden duck with jeweled eyes. 

Carey should have a rotating series of tributes, whatever catches Taako's eye. Whatever is challenging. Maybe nobody will expect a powerful, aging mage to steal and Taako won't have too hard a time with it. Carey will be so proud over in the Astral Plane.

Angus deserves dozens of spoons and forks and knives pilfered from every inn Taako visits in his wanderings, each one slipped into the sleeves of his robe when nobody else is watching. It won't be the same as his grandfather's silverware set, of course, but it's a good thought. 

Merle can have a great big, gaudy, just-for-show axe encrusted in jewels that look great but would throw the balance off horribly in battle. It's not like he ever uses his axe, no matter what he says when they're drunk. 

He hopes Taako plants flowers on Merle's grave. The type that creep upwards on twisting vines and flower in eye-searingly bright colors.

Magnus wonders if Taako thinks about all this—about centuries spent tempting fate on solo adventures that never quite measure up to the BoB glory days—and he sighs. He can't ask him, because he can't risk bringing up the pain of that thought if it hasn't arisen yet. 

He wants to protect him from that too.

**Author's Note:**

> Please blame Grace for all sad Magnus feels. It's entirely vis fault.


End file.
